Sunday, March 27, 2016

Party!

After their experience on the dark planet, it took more than a month of further travel to find anything interesting. In fact, it was the 100th day of leaving Earth, and the good Captain decided to throw a party. It was hardly started before Frosty challenged the Captain to a drinking contest. The Captain, after a moment's thought, agreed; loser buys the drinks. There was a Spin-the-Wheel-of-Drinks, at $5 a spin; the Captain had spun and guzzled two glasses of Sex On The Beach, a Beertini, and a glass of cheap wine; Frosty tossed back two glasses of cheap champagne, a shot of black-label whiskey, and a shot of Snakebite, a mix of alcohol and snake venom. The Captain was actually winning, being slightly less drunk than the insectoid... at least until he spun a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. He chugged the drink and promptly passed out. And then a med tech had him moved to the med bay where he got his stomach pumped.

Shifting Horizon

Book 1, Chapter 2

(Joining the group is Julian Tarvis, a pilot and communications officer.)

Exploring jumpspace is, frankly, boring. There are long stints of doing absolutely nothing in jumpspace, followed by short stints of doing absolutely nothing while calculating where you actually are. After about a week of exploration, during which nothing but empty space or basic rocks-around-a-star solar systems were found, the team found something interesting.

The system itself was quite interesting; it was a binary star system, with a very small red dwarf, and a very large brown dwarf. The brown dwarf was far too large, and yet had not reached fusion; it was large enough to block the light from the red dwarf. The surface temperature of the brown dwarf is a balmy 200 degrees F, and surface gravity is roughly 250 times that of Earth.

Orbiting the binary stars are two objects of interest: first, an Earth-like world, and second, a strange ship. The team quickly decided to take a look at the ship first.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The UEA SS Shifting Horizon was commissioned as an exploratory vessel, with plenty of manufacturing and science capability, but not a lot of weapons or shields. The ship currently contains 10 officers, four others in cryo, 18 crew, plus four in cryo, and 20 civilians.
The ship is, at least officially, run by Captain James Montegue Harrison III, Earl of Shaftesbury, and his first mate, Commander Seth Grainer. However, the Captain is a leering, lazy, slobbish misanthrope, and usually leaves the actual duties to his first mate. Commander Seth Grainer is a sharp, upwardly mobile officer, though he does have some authority issues, especially with the Captain. Unlike the Captain, the Commander actually rose through military ranks to attain his position.

The crew includes four pilots, three of which are from a military background, three engineering techs, a communication tech, two science techs, three med techs, and five soldiers. A full list of current and previous crew is listed on this page.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

United Earth Alliance

The UEA is the governing body of humanity. It has more power than the United Nations or the European Union, but it does not interfere in individual countries unless requested, or if it sees a dangerous problem. At least, that's how it works in theory.

In truth, while the UEA may not hold much power in Earth's solar system, it is far more powerful on other systems. A few larger systems like the Nahundi System, the Seginus Cluster, or the Kchk'Trrs homeworld of the Omega Parada System rule themselves, but most planets, even the Pentacus System, fall under the thumb of the UEA. And the smaller the system, the harsher the rule. Powerful and corrupt, the UEA still manages to put up a clean, cheerful demeanor, at least to the more powerful systems. Travel between planets is as rare in 2750 as it is now on Earth; only a tiny fraction of the population travel from world to world, and even then mostly on business, or to a resort, where the true mark of the UEA is rarely present.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Population as of 2750

For those of you who enjoy knowing population statistics, this is a full list of every major system. There are countless smaller systems out there, most populated by fewer than a million beings; listing those would take more space than is available. Also, these are populations for systems; I realize that a planet with a trillion people on it is unsustainable. Earth, for instance, has 10.9 trillion people; however, many of those are on Mars, the Moon, and probably some of Jupiter's moons. It's still a lot of people. Earth is quite crowded.

Jumpspace was discovered in 2137 with the first successful jumpdrive test. Originally, jumpspace was researched as true FTL travel, but once the first tests were successful, it was discovered that the jumpdrives were actually moving through extra dimensions. With their discovery, the future of the universe was forever changed. Humans were the first to discover jumpspace in the Milky Way; the Kchk'Trrs created their jump drives by building off of shared human technology, while the Duul'Tlak created their drive from a reverse-engineered ship they captured.

While this history is by no means complete (a GM can't give away all his secrets!), it does cover most general information that would be covered in school or in military training. From the discovery of the jumpdrive in 2137, humanity has pushed for expansion. Even with terrible danger, there will always be humans willing to seek new worlds. Indeed, it wasn't until 2287 that "Slinging" was discovered, which made space travel much safer along known routes, and it took until 2552 for J1 drives to make space travel as safe as air travel today. Even so, 15 systems were settled in that time.

Wherein the crew of the Shifting Horizon began their inaugural voyage to the stars

Book 1, Prologue: Introductions

After some initial confusion (character creation can be a bit odd), the officers of the Shifting Horizon made it on board and began getting to know each other. Unfortunately, I paid about as much attention to names as their leering and lazy Captain, for which I apologize. The crew consists of a yet-unnamed Android, two humans (one named Tina Fey), a crazy mad-scientist Kchk'Trrs named Frosty Flame, and a Duul'Tlak named Q (perhaps Kyu?) who likes to hit things. With his fists.